LinkedIn is an excellent resource to use for your content marketing. And, as you’re already aware (or should be) content marketing is an essential part of doing business today, whether you have an online or offline business.
Simply put, you need content to communicate with your audience, to produce useful information, and maybe even to create your products.
We’ve put together the best practices when using LinkedIn for content marketing.
Know Your Content Marketing Goals
What do you want to accomplish from LinkedIn?
- Do you want to generate more leads?
- Do you want to grow your brand awareness?
- Are you looking to promote your products or services?
- Trying to connect with your ideal customers or clients?
- Build a community around your brand?
- Educate potential customers to develop them into paying clients?
LinkedIn can do all the above. But before you publish anything, know what your goal is and what the point of the content you’ll publish is.
Know the Places You Can Publish Content on LinkedIn
When you think of content marketing, you are probably thinking about publishing articles on LinkedIn. That is one way, but you can also use your profile page, your company page, groups, InMails, emails and other people’s content to participate in content marketing via LinkedIn’s platform.
Understand the Various Content Types You Can Publish on LinkedIn
You can publish articles, posts, photos, videos, links, and you can also publish comments and other types of engagement on LinkedIn, such as within groups. Try to mix up your content between promotional and other types of content.
Your directly promotional content should constitute no more than 20% of your content marketing on LinkedIn, and do mix up the types, focusing mostly on what’s popular at that moment. I’m not suggesting that you lean in completely to each new trend, but, if your buyer audience is in on the trend, you must be as well.
For example, right now, video is very popular and gets more engagement.
Pick the Right Subjects to Publish
This goes back to your purpose and the goals you have set for your content marketing on LinkedIn. It must be something that your targeted audience wants and needs to know about, that shows your experience and expertise, and that lets your audience feel trusting of you. You can publish informational articles, an opinion article, share industry news and your thoughts about it, and much more.
Use Your Sales Funnel as Your Guide
The point of posting articles and content anywhere is to offer more opportunities for your ideal audience to find you. Then your job is to move them from LinkedIn to your website and ultimately onto your email list so that you can nurture them and get them to purchase your products and/or services.
Respond to Those Who Like or Comment on Your Content
When you do publish something, be sure to ask for feedback and engagement. Then make sure you engage with the people who comment on your content. If you see people are liking your content but not commenting, reach out to them to ask them what they liked most about the piece.
Be Sure to Engage with Other Content Too
LinkedIn, like most social networks, works due to reciprocity. The idea is that real people are publishing useful content, and more real people are responding to the content.
That’s what makes the internet work at all for networking, relationship building, and business. The idea that people will engage and converse about topics together online in a mutually beneficial way is compelling.
Do Not Forget Your CTA
Finally, remember to include a call to action (CTA). Your CTA can be a question, asking people to like, follow, share, use your #hashtag or something like that. Give them instructions on what to do next, and you’ll be a lot more successful with all your content marketing. Aside from making sure your profile is targeted and complete, publish content two to three times a week or up to daily to get the most results.
Recommended Reading
Understanding how LinkedIn can help you market your content across the platform is important, but how do you get your LinkedIn content noticed? And exactly how often should you be posting your content for optimum eyeballs and, hopefully, shares?
We have you covered in our article, Ten Ways To Ensure Your LinkedIn Posts Get Noticed And How Often You Should Be Posting.
It’s highly recommended that you give it a quick read through if you plan on taking LinkedIn content marketing seriously.
